CHAPTER XXII

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I return to Stymphelus and to Geronteum, the boundary between the districts of Pheneus and Stymphelus. The people of Stymphelus are no longer ranked as Arcadians, but are in the Argolic League from their own choice. But that they are of Arcadian race is testified by Homer, and Stymphelus, the founder of the town, was great grandson of Arcas, the son of Callisto. He is said originally to have built the town on another site than that it now occupies. In old Stymphelus lived they say Temenus the son of Pelasgus, who brought up Hera, and built three temples to the goddess and called her by three titles, when she was still a maiden the Child-goddess, and after she was married to Zeus he called her the Full-grown, and after she broke with Zeus for some reason or other and returned to Stymphelus he called her the Widow. This is the tradition about the goddess at Stymphelus. But the town in our day has none of these temples, though it has the following remarkable things. There is a spring from which the Emperor Adrian conveyed water to the town of Corinth. In winter this spring converts a small marsh into the river Stymphelus, but in summer the marsh is dry, and the river is only fed by the spring. This river soaks into the ground, and comes up again in Argolis, where its name is changed to Erasinus. About this river Stymphelus there is a tradition that some man-eating birds lived on its banks, whom Hercules is said to have killed with his arrows. But Pisander of Camirus says that Hercules did not kill them but only frightened them away with the noise of rattles. The desert of Arabia has among other monsters some birds called Stymphelides, who are as savage to men as lions and leopards. They attack those who come to capture them, and wound them with their beaks and kill them. They pierce through coats of mail that men wear, and if they put on thick robes of mat, the beaks of these birds penetrate them too, as the wings of little birds stick in bird-lime. Their size is about that of the crane, and they are like storks, but their beaks are stronger and not crooked like those of storks. Whether these birds now in Arabia, that have the same name as those formerly in Arcadia, are similar in appearance I do not know, but if there have been in all time these Stymphelides like hawks and eagles, then they are probably of Arabian origin, and some of them may formerly have flown from Arabia to Stymphelus in Arcadia. They may also have been originally called some other name than Stymphelides by the Arabians: and the fame of Hercules, and the superiority of the Greeks to the barbarians, may have made the name Stymphelides prevail to our day over their former name in the desert of Arabia. At Stymphelus there is also an ancient temple of Stymphelian Artemis, the statue is wooden but most of it gilt over. And on the roof of the temple is a representation of these birds called Stymphelides. It is difficult to decide whether it is in wood or plaster, but I conjecture more likely in wood than plaster. There are also represented some maidens in white stone with legs like birds, standing behind the temple. And in our days a wonderful thing is said to have happened. They were celebrating at Stymphelus the festival of Stymphelian Artemis rather negligently, and violating most of the established routine, when a tree fell at the opening of the cavity where the river Stymphelus goes underground, and blocked up the passage, so that the plain became a marsh for 400 stades. And they say that a hunter was pursuing a fleeing deer, and it jumped into the swamp, and the hunter in the heat of the chase jumped in after it: and it swallowed up both deer and man. And they say the water of the river followed them, so that in a day the whole water in the plain was dried up, _they having opened a way for it_. And since that time they have celebrated the festival of Artemis with greater ardour.

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